Gaslands – Putting a New Face on an Old Obsession

I have more time for hobbies these days, but I keep using them for hobbies, and not for writing about hobbies. Also, M gave me a PS4 for Christmas and Horizon Zero Dawn is amazing! Grin. So that’s a factor. And finally, while I haven’t posted in a while, it might be in part because one of the blogs I occasionally check out introduced me to Gaslands. Post-apocalyptic death races played out using modified toy cars. I’ve played two games now, and I’m hooked (although, let’s be honest, I was 70% hooked before I’d ever laid template to mat). But let’s start at the beginning.

As I said, I saw mention of Gaslands on Steinberg Shed Space and immediately got excited about the concept. A fresh new Car Wars? Already scaled for Hot Wheels? I decided I should at least try to find somebody else to try it out, so I don’t just end up painting a bunch of models and never using them (fingers crossed, Saga! one of these days!). I outlined the basic concept to my friend CP, she was immediately sold on the idea, and so I ordered 2 books instead of one. I hit up the downloads section of gaslands.com and started putting some cars together based on the rudimentary knowledge I could glean from the build side of the quick reference card.

I selected the Gaslands rulebook as my staff pick at work (picking a gamebook seemed weird, but what the hey), and then I built some more.

I’ve raided the bits bins at the local shop a few times to bulk out my own bits supply now, and eventually our books arrived. I read through it and we set a date for our first test game.

We were now both totally committed to this one. CP had live-posted her way through our game (those are some of her black and white photos above) and netted us a whole pile of additional interest, along with a number of admirers for my modified taco truck. People started asking about it, and now we’ve got a 16-member facebook page for local players… which brought me to my second game; Demo Night at the shop.

Had 4 people take part in the first stage of a race, and several more checked it out and asked questions; I’ll probably do at least one more demo session before we set up a regular Gaslands night. I broke my various builds down into several 50-can teams of 2 cars each so that people could play before having to build anything, but everybody that played was similarly pumped about the building part of it, and so everybody had cars ready to go. I only took one picture (one of these days I’ll improve!); it’s pretty much the second shift phase of the game. Note to self, don’t make people corner right away.

The hobby time that I’ve spent lately has mostly been building, with a little painting mixed in, but I think I’m going to make that into a post of it’s own.

6 comments

It’s a lot of fun, and I’ve certainly found it easier to teach/rope in new players than car wars. More intuitive, and already scaled to hot wheels size. Something about the tactile nostalgia of ‘playing cars’ again. Grin.